I represent Alexander McGillivray. I was a resident of West Florida during the British period and a member of the ubiquitous and prosperous McGillivray clan. It can be difficult to sort out myth from fact when it comes my early life, but I was born about 1750 in Little Tallassee (near Montgomery, AL today) to Sehoy Marchand – a half-French woman of the prominent Wind clan of the Creeks, and Lachlan Lia McGillivray, a Scottish merchant. Because Creek culture is matrilineal, even mixed race children are considered full-blooded if the Creek heritage comes through the mother. So I was born into an expectation of leadership. After my early childhood, my father took me to Charleston where I was given a European education. I returned to my mother’s people in 1777. This blending of two cultures within me allowed me to serve as an intermediary between the British and the indigenous peoples as the British tried to secure native allies in West Florida. I owned a British-style plantation on the Alabama River in northern Baldwin County. I became the principal chief of the Upper Creek towns when Emistigo died in 1783. I died in Pensacola on February 17, 1793. I was interred with Masonic honors in the garden of William Panton, in the city of Pensacola, though my family later reinterred me at my old plantation.
Sources: 3, 24, 28, 29, 36, 40, 55